by Anne Nesbet
“Jonah, your friends are here!” said Noah’s parents when the Huppes arrived, even though it could hardly have been less accurate to call any of those three people at the door Noah’s “friends.”
The young Huppes had on track jackets over their turtlenecks. They all — the boys and their mother — looked somewhat put-upon and under stress, as if Noah himself were a great big enormous bowl of curried rice they didn’t know what to do with.
“It’s so kind of you to take Jonah around Berlin!” said Noah’s parents, even though they knew it had very little or nothing to do with kindness.
“Our pleasure,” said Frau Huppe, while the upper half of her face frowned.
“Have a lovely time, Jonah!” said Noah’s parents, even though it was exactly zero percent likely that Noah — or, from the looks on their faces, any of the Huppes — would have a lovely time. Tests aren’t like that.
That was the moment when Noah stood extra straight and got ready to implement his secret plan: the Turn-the-Test-Tables Plan. He had prepared that weekend because, as his mother used to say back in Oasis, where it wasn’t even really necessary, “The best defense is a good offense.” Noah’s secret offense involved two German sentences he had practiced quite a bit, under his breath, that weekend, and they were:
1. “Could you please tell me about X?”
and
2. “Could you please tell me more about X?”
In the Pergamon Museum, on the Museum Island, in the misty, drizzly morning hours of that long day, Noah started out bravely with “Could you please tell me about this castle?”
It was amazing: a huge blue-tiled structure right in the museum under a greenhouse roof. Just enormous! And with ceramic lions and dragons all over it and castle-like toothy battlements all along the top! But apparently it wasn’t really a castle. Apparently it was a famous gate, the Ishtar Gate, the entrance to the old city of Babylon.
“Perhaps your parents have traveled to some of these old cities,” said Frau Huppe at the end of her long explanation. “Have they talked about their travels with you?”
“Could you please tell me more about Babylon?” said Noah. Sometimes a sentence, even a German sentence, will just surprise you by tripping easily off your tongue. “And these lions?”
Ingo and Karl were already staring at him with astonishment. We will not say admiration; we will leave it at astonishment.
Soon enough Frau Huppe ran out of things to say about Babylon; they looked at the enormous Pergamon Altar, which is absolutely covered with statues of gods and goddesses and monsters and heroes all fighting one another.
Ingo liked the gore and the weapons, so Noah had a bit of a break from his two magical questions, but eventually Frau Huppe became impatient with Ingo and mythological battles and announced they were going next to a street called Husemannstraße, not so far away, where old buildings had been carefully preserved and renovated into a new Museum of Working-Class Life in Berlin Around 1900.
The museum was a reconstructed apartment from almost a hundred years ago. Ingo lost interest about one minute after pointing out the funny old bicycle on the wall. He had already been here on a school field trip, and he wasn’t eager to do it all over again. Ingo frowned at the old-fashioned cookstove in the kitchen.
“It gives us insight into the struggle of the working people,” said Frau Huppe. “Perhaps your parents, Jonah, have said something about how they feel about the working classes?”
“Oh!” said Noah, and this time he happily let the Astonishing Stutter slow him down. “Could you . . . Could you please tell me more about the working classes of Berlin?”
For lunch, they went to a restaurant in the Palast der Republik, a vast and modern building with windows that reflected the gray sky in a metallic bronze.
“This is the people’s palace!” said Frau Huppe. “In it the people’s parliament meets. And there are concerts.”
“And good ice cream,” said Ingo.
“Like your Washington, D.C., where your government works,” said Frau Huppe. “Don’t your parents often go to Washington, D.C., perhaps for their jobs?”
“Hmm,” said Noah, looking over the menu. “Could you please tell me more about . . . bratwurst?”
That struck Tweedledum and Tweedledee as incredibly funny. They couldn’t imagine a universe where anyone could ask questions about bratwurst, which turned out to be a kind of sausage. Lunch was followed by ice cream, and for a moment even Ingo was smiling.
After the sausage and the ice cream, however, Ingo said, “Let’s take him home now.”
Frau Huppe and Karl both frowned at the youngest Huppe.
“First, the Treptower Park,” said Frau Huppe firmly. “Paying respect to the great Soviet sacrifice.”
“Or let’s go to the Pioneer Palace!” said Ingo. “Let’s go see the cosmonaut exhibit!”
Frau Huppe’s stress wrinkle dug deeper into her forehead.
“Not today,” she said. “It’s the forty-fourth anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Berlin this week, so we will go pay our respects.”
Treptower turned out to be an enormous park that was also sort of a cemetery: long garden alleyways led to a small hill on which the most massive statue of a Russian soldier held a statue of a small German child in its arms.
“Please could you tell me about this . . . park?” said Noah, running out of questions — and out of nouns. A miserable thin rain began to spit down from the gray sky, and he was suddenly desperately tired.
“What does your family think about the Soviet Union?” asked Frau Huppe. She seemed tired, too. “How do they feel about socialism?”
“It’s raining,” said Karl and Ingo. Ingo went on to say it three or four more times; plus he pointed out that if they had gone to the cosmonaut exhibition in the Pioneer Palace, they would have been safely indoors.
So they took Noah home.
And thanks to that long day, 54 Max-Beer-Straße actually felt something like “home” now — when Noah’s parents opened the door of the apartment, Noah was so glad to see them, he almost burst into tears.
“Jonah!” said his mother, and his father gave him an enormous, enormous hug. “Did you have a nice time? Say good-bye to your friends.”
They weren’t his friends. But they all shook hands anyway.
Frau Huppe made a brisk little speech to Noah’s mother about how much there was for her office to do before the huge FDJ gathering beginning in just a few days now. And about how the schools were about to go on their middle-of-May spring vacation, too, so really nothing could be done before June. And June was practically the end of the school year. So . . .
“Your Jonah should of course write up his petition, asking to be sent to school. Why not? But we mustn’t expect success.”
“I thought you were the authority who could tell the schools what to do about a visiting child’s education,” said Noah’s mom. That was more or less what she said, Noah guessed, but since his brain was pretty well worn out by now, some of his mother’s long German words washed right over him like seawater.
“Well,” said Frau Huppe, “of course, there is the impression one has of Jonah’s skills today, and the impression one had after our evening a few days ago.”
There was a reasonably long silence, while Noah’s family tried to figure out what this meant.
“Submit your letter to the ministry,” said Frau Huppe finally. “Come on, now, Karl, Ingo.”
Noah’s parents had him sit right down at the table and write his little essay. “Do it while it’s all still fresh in your mind,” they said encouragingly. Noah wrote down two sentences about each thing they had seen that day, and he said he very much wanted to go to school, to improve his German and to get to know more about the culture of the GDR. His superpower meant he could write a pretty good letter in German, but thank goodness he didn’t have to read it aloud!
“I’ll take this into the ministry tomorrow,” said his mother indoors that evening.
And a moment later, “Well, never mind about that. Tonight we’ll make crumb cake from a mix and watch some East German television.”
Secret File #8
LOOKING-GLASS TELEVISION
Almost everyone in East Germany had a television. Here were the programs offered on East German television’s two channels on one weekday evening in May 1989:
CHANNEL 1
19.30 (7:30 p.m.) Aktuelle Kamera — the East German news. For fifteen solid minutes, the news announcer reads letters of gratitude written by international antifascists to the chairman of the Central Committee and president of the State Assembly, Erich Honecker. On the screen is a picture of Chairman Erich Honecker: he has white hair and nerdy glasses and looks pleased to be receiving all this praise and gratitude.
20.00 (8 p.m.) Obscure Austrian film.
21.45 (9:45 p.m.) “In the Name of the People” — a documentary.
22.30 (10:30 p.m.) Aktuelle Kamera again. More East German news. Scenes from the annual meeting of some enormous East German youth group. The newscaster reads from his notes: “A hundred thousand voices just sang their pledge of allegiance to the revolutionary roots of the youth organization of the GDR.” The young people, dressed in bright-blue shirts, hold up signs saying things like WESTERN FREEDOM — NO, THANKS!
22.45 (10:45 p.m.) Yugoslavian documentary about rural life.
23.35 (11:35 p.m.) Alles, was Recht ist (“Everything That’s Legal”). State lawyer Dr. Friedrich Wolff answers legal questions from GDR citizens: “What can I do when my neighbor won’t repair his fence?”
CHANNEL 2
18.00 (6 p.m.) “You and Your Garden.”
18.25 (6:25 p.m.) Der schwarze Kanal (“The Black Channel”). Snippets of West German television put together to make the West Germans look bad, while a man named Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler makes snide comments.
18.55 (6:55 p.m.) News headlines.
19.00 (7 p.m.) Historical program on seventeenth-century Dutch politics.
20.00 (8 p.m.) Czechoslovakian film.
21.30 (9:30 p.m.) Aktuelle Kamera. More news, complete with the weather report.
Not listed here, by the way, are the television programs most people actually watched, because those came floating over the Wall from West Berlin.
“Well, that’s it, the spring holiday’s over,” said Noah’s mother one afternoon at the end of May. “The kids are back in school, finally, and that means me, too. Can’t believe how much time is being eaten out of my research by school vacations! But now my minder’s going to take me around.”
They were sitting on a bench in a park, because the weather was finally feeling less like winter. They had already been in East Berlin almost three weeks. Another week and it would be a month. Noah had an imaginary pencil clutched in his imaginary hand, just waiting to check off that first month on his secret imaginary calendar of How Long He Had to Be Jonah. One month down; five to go.
The hardest part about being Jonah was this: not going to school and not having any friends. Okay, that was two things. The Tweedle-Huppes — not good candidates for friendship, anyway — had completely vanished. Noah’s mother had even sent them an invitation to dinner, but they had turned it down. “It would not, unfortunately, be possible,” they had said. Whether it was fear of curried rice or just wanting to stay away from the dangerous Americans, Noah didn’t know. By now he was so tired of being the only kid in his world, he would almost even have been glad to see Ingo.
“What’s a minder?” said Noah, kicking a little at the ground beneath the bench.
“She’s another one from the Ministry of Education. She’ll take me to visit the various schools and make sure I don’t get into any trouble during my observations.”
“Like a babysitter,” said Noah.
His mother hooted (quietly).
“Kind of.”
“What about me going to school?”
The hoot evaporated.
“Well,” said his mother, “I don’t honestly know what’s happening with that. The ministry’s being slow. And remember that Frau Huppe wasn’t exactly encouraging.”
“Isn’t there a law that says kids need to be in school?” he asked. “Even here? Doesn’t everyone have to go to school?”
“Let’s keep hoping,” said Noah’s mother. “Let’s keep hoping. If not this spring, then maybe next fall.”
“Next fall” might have been two of the most depressing words Noah had ever heard. He tried very hard not to think about them.
The next morning, he woke up to the nutty-sweet smell of something cooking.
“Good morning, Yo-Yo!” said his father when Noah appeared in the kitchen. “Ready for some pancakes? I got a little carried away this morning. I was just lying around, thinking about pancake ingredients, and then I realized that since I found the little envelopes of Baking Joy, which seems to be baking powder, yesterday at the Kaufhalle, I mean the store, we now have everything, absolutely everything, you need to make pancakes, and pretty much two minutes after I realized that, I was in here mixing batter together. How are they?”
“So good!” said Noah. “Yum.”
Noah’s mom looked at her watch.
“Five minutes before the minder arrives! And we know she won’t be late, because for one thing people seem to run things on time here, and for another thing I learned she lives in this very building.”
“How extremely convenient!” said Noah’s father. “What a coincidence!”
He said all that using his special camouflage tone of voice, the one that gave you no clue whether he was joking or being perfectly serious.
“The babysitter lives here?” said Noah. He hadn’t seen anyone who looked even slightly like a babysitter in the stairwell.
“Minder,” said his mother, shooting him a significant look. “I guess we live in a pretty high-toned building. People from ministries everywhere. Of course, they keep to themselves. And then there’s us.”
The doorbell rang.
“And that’s her now!” said Noah’s mother, jumping up.
The minder turned out to be a medium-small woman with gray-brown hair. If Noah had ever seen her before, he didn’t remember it.
“Renate März,” she said.
Noah’s mother organized all the necessary polite introductions. The woman looked at Noah with particular interest.
“Hello, young man,” she said in German. “You must be Jonah.”
Noah’s mother gave him a gentle prod in the back that meant This is when you prove you’re a polite person who wasn’t raised by wolves.
“Glad to meet you,” said Noah. He was nervous, and the bicycle of his speech ran into wall after wall. It wasn’t really that being nervous made the stutter worse. It just made it harder for him to recover when he hit a wall or a bump, and that made the stutter worse.
As usual, in Noah’s long experience, the woman’s face changed while he was talking.
She shook Noah’s hand and said to Noah’s mother, “I see. He must inspire your work. It’s not easy, to have a child with such a defect.”
Noah bristled, but the Rules meant he couldn’t say anything even the slightest bit sarcastic. Why, though, should it be hard for his parents to have a kid who stutters? It wasn’t hard for him, particularly, to be the kid who actually did stutter; he just kept moving along and moving along, and eventually everything that needed saying got itself said. What was so hard about that?
But he noticed that the woman’s tone of voice had changed. It was as if she had been testing them, and they had passed the test.
“And your husband is here to take care of the boy,” she said. “Yes, I see.”
It sounded like she was filling out a form in her mind as she spoke to them.
“Sam is also working on his novel while we’re here,” said Noah’s mother, and Noah’s father made a modest little sou
nd from over in the kitchen. Noah noticed that neither she nor his father went on to mention that the novel was about mink farmers, however.
Frau März didn’t seem to want to hear about the novel.
“Well, children are the future!” she said in a bright tone of voice, and in the stiffest English Noah had ever heard, she added: “I think you’ll see that we do everything we can here to promote the Well-Being of the Child.”
“Yes,” said Noah’s father, coming in with a dish towel in his hand. “Of course. I’m sure you do.”
Noah’s mother was gathering up her notebooks and pens. She tucked them into a bag and waved good-bye, and then off she went with the minder to visit programs for children with speech deficits in whatever East Berlin schools the minder was willing to show her.
Noah and his father looked at each other.
“Maybe I could go play in the park for a while?” said Noah. That was his place for being outside and alone when being inside and alone seemed particularly unbearable.
“Don’t bother those construction crews,” said his father, as he always did. “Promise to stay out of their way and out of trouble?”
Yes yes yes yes.
He always stayed a million miles out of trouble.
So he went down to the construction site and watched holes being dug for a while. Noah had a high basic tolerance for construction, because when buildings were going up, you could see the way they were put together, and he always liked knowing the way things were put together. But here they were still just digging holes, not building things up from those holes, so when watching them dig became too boring for words, he walked around the park that wasn’t really a park and kicked at weeds and twigs.
There were some interesting little nooks and crannies created by the extra fences up around the construction site, and Noah liked to seek out places to sit that were out of sight of workers and apartment windows.
He needed to think.
Something about the conversation with that minder had really gotten under his skin. She had softened so distinctly when Noah had opened his mouth and the Astonishing Stutter had popped right out and started showing off. Why was that?